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How ‘Oathbringer’ (2017) Failed Shallan Davarhttps://cinemaromantique.com/2018/01/10/oathbringer/
https://cinemaromantique.com/2018/01/10/oathbringer/#respondWed, 10 Jan 2018 19:02:06 +0000http://cinemaromantique.com/?p=807More]]>Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson’s third gargantuan book in the planned ten-book fantasy epic “The Stormlight Archives,” came out near the end of November of 2017. While I don’t read as much classical fantasy as I used to, Sanderson’s work tends to be inventive, epic, and compulsively readable – I think I read his Mistborn trilogy in a single sublimely relaxing weekend – and Oathbringer is no exception. And while there are plenty of things to discuss with the book, both good and bad, this is a blog about love, sex, and relationships, so I’m going to focus a bit. What I want to talk about is the book’s treatment of its main female character, Shallan Davar, and how a mistake in framing an internal conflict can accidentally send some mixed signals.

For some background: In the world of Roshar, the kingdom of Alethkar are at war against the Parshendi, a nomadic race the Alethi use as slaves, to avenge the Parshendi assassination of the Alethi king years ago. The two groups have been locked in a brutal stalemate for years on the Shattered Plains, a hellish wasteland of plateaus and chasms that makes combat a nightmare. It looks like the fighting may never end. But on both sides, ancient secrets are bubbling back to the surface. Alethi general Dalinar Kholin is plagued by strange visions; Shallan Davar, a minor noble from a small nation looking to marry rich and save her family, finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy; and Kaladin, a brutalized human slave, begins to exhibit strange abilities that just might turn the tide of the battle.

In the series’ highpoint thus far, Words of Radiance, background player Shallan Davar took center stage in a way that took the book in fascinating new directions. Shallan is an artist with a troubled past – an abusive homelife that led to a moment of violence that has shaped her to this day – who came to be the ward of Jasnah Kholin, a renowned heritic and sister to the sitting king. Initially, she sought to save her family from ruin by their abusive father, but throughout The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, she slowly realizes that she has a part to play in the resurrection of an ancient order of heroes known as the Knights Radiant and their battle against a recurring calamity known as the Desolation. The second book found Shallan battling her timidity and uncertainty in the face of these much more powerful nobles while also having to come to terms with her role in a family tragedy that haunts her to this day. It was a complex and memorable character arc that solidified Shallan as my favorite character in a series with an… expansive cast, we’ll say.

Unfortunately, the third book, Oathbringer, doesn’t entirely live up to the second when it comes to Shallan. On its face, this makes sense; Dalinar Kholin is the main character of this one, which means that Shallan has to take a bit of a backseat. I’m actually okay with that. But the question becomes, how should she take a back seat. To discuss my issues with Shallan’s arc here, I’m going to change pace for just a moment.

Kaladin’s arc continues each book to be about the evolution of his ideals as a Windrunner. In The Way of Kings, his point-of-view book, he discovered those ideals. He took a step back in Words of Radiance, but his arc was still fundamentally about the evolution of those ideals, as he was asked to protect a man he despised. His vow – called an ‘Ideal’ – is what gives him his power, and it forced him to choose between being a Windrunner or getting revenge; he could not do both. This was a fairly meaty conflict, and it continued in Oathbringer, as his recently made Third Ideal – “I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right.” – was tested as he spent time with the Voidbringers and realized that, by and large, they were people just like his own, trying to survive and not particularly looking for war. In a way, Kaladin’s Ideals give his story, even when he is a background figure, a strong structure that keeps it compelling.

Shallan, however, is a Lightweaver. She doesn’t make Ideals in the way Kaladin does, so there is less of a natural backbone to her arc. That said, Sanderson hit on an interesting idea: As an illusionist, she has the unique ability to get almost completely lost in her own lies and identities. This pairs well with the trauma brought up in Words of Radiance, where she came to realize her part in the abusive mess of a family relationship that had sent her on this journey to begin with. Her powers are intimately linked with the death of her mother, who tried to kill her as a child, and the trauma of this realization often causes her to subsume her guilt and self-loathing within a series of increasingly intricate identities. She’s losing herself.

This is actually really good stuff, in my opinion. Like Kaladin, it’s a slightly smaller conflict than in her point-of-view book, but one that is tied to her powers and the unique challenges they represent. And it provides a unique challenge. Kaladin’s story runs the risk of becoming repetitive, a sequence of samey power-ups, where Shallan’s more formless, internal conflict opens a lot of potentially interesting doors. Where Oathbringer runs into trouble for me is in the way Sanderson decides to represent Shallan’s search for identities: As a love triangle.

Now, on its surface, this is a pretty typical usage of a love triangle, and I can see why Sanderson chose to use it. Love triangles are often used in stories to indicate a character conflict, typically with each person in the triangle representing a choice the character has to make. Do they want stability or passion? Do they want safety or adventure? Do they want respectability or love? The love triangle itself is an external representation of an internal conflict.

Oathbringer does things a little differently. Essentially, Oathbringer breaks Shallan into three semi-distinct personas: Radiant, Veil, and Shallan. Radiant is a persona explicitly crafted to appeal to her betrothed, Adolin Kholin, and walk comfortably in his world; Veil, her more rough-and-tumble, streetwise identity, begins to develop feelings, of a sort, for former slave turned soldier, Kaladin. The way love triangles typically work, then, the choice is: Does she want to be Radiant, or Veil — that is, does she want the upper-class responsibility and power, or the fun and freedom of Veil’s hard-drinking tavern life. But that’s not where the book goes. The core of her arc here is not about which man she will wind up with, but about which identity will prove dominant. In other words, it’s not about picking either lifestyle, but about finding her own self-worth divorced from them both.

But here’s where I think Oathbringer runs into a problem: By framing it as a choice between two men, each of whom is represented by one of the personas, any choice she makes automatically becomes a victory for that persona (and what it represents), rather than the reclamation of her own self worth. To his credit, Sanderson seems to recognize this, and has a last-minute twist where one of the personas changes her mind, allowing Shallan to defy both and still make a choice… but this really does kind of come out of nowhere, a last-minute fix that papers over the issue without really resolving it. The framing of the question necessitates a rejection of the options as presented, but the book doesn’t go there.

As a quick note, it is possible that I’m wrong, and that Sanderson doesn’t intend for Shallan’s decision to be a victory for Shallan, but rather an example of her being further subsumed by her identities. I don’t think there’s much evidence for that in this book, however, and I don’t think that’s Sanderson’s intention. In a way, this is a standard disclaimer when discussing an interpretation of a series in progress… but in part, this is the natural outcome of the confusion created by method chosen to tell this story.

Now, this is mostly a fairly minor quibble in a book I largely quite liked, but I do think it’s worth considering the way we contemplate and frame internal conflicts differently for men and for women. Sanderson is a sharp writer and “The Stormlight Archives” have, thus far, been a big, epic blast, and one I highly recommend to readers looking for an old-school fantasy series that’s willing to pair its enormous action setpieces with equally large ethical considerations about imperialism, violence, and honor. But in Oathbringer, I admit that I was a little disappointed that he took one of the series’ most complex and fascinating characters and reduced a fairly profound internal conflict into a love triangle that doesn’t even work as a proxy for the story Sanderson ostensibly wanted to tell. It’s not just down to issues of gender in storytelling, but also clarity of storytelling. Oathbringer does a lot of strong character work, but with Shallan, the book slips up.

]]>https://cinemaromantique.com/2018/01/10/oathbringer/feed/0OathbringercinemaromantiqueElaine May Recognized the Bleakness of the Romantic Comedyhttps://cinemaromantique.com/2017/12/11/elaine-may-new-leaf/
https://cinemaromantique.com/2017/12/11/elaine-may-new-leaf/#respondMon, 11 Dec 2017 15:41:03 +0000http://cinemaromantique.com/?p=791More]]>One of my favorite genres of film is the romantic comedy. I’ve written a fair bit about the genre, modern failures and classic charms, on this blog before. It’s a genre that is, in many ways, on the decline in American mainstream filmmaking. There is something deeply toxic about a great many romantic comedies, in which two horrible people start off hating one another, lie to each other constantly, and only end up together at the last possible minute because, well, it’s the last possible minute. I’m not surprise the genre has floundered, given how toxic films like This Means War and Bride Wars really are, and part of the problem is that society’s fairly toxic attitudes on consent, misogyny, and interpersonal boundaries are often ported in, unexamined, to the heightened world of the romantic comedy. But every so often, a filmmaker is very aware of those tropes and interactions, and manages to make a romantic comedy that doesn’t avoid those pitfalls, but leaps headfirst into them, fully realizing how toxic many of them are and giddy with the chance to critique them. A New Leaf, a 1971 film directed by Elaine May, is just such a film.

Henry Graham is an aging bachelor who aspires to do nothing with his life but live richly. Unfortunately for Henry, his thoughtless spending has caused him to run out of cash, and he quickly realizes that without money, he doesn’t have much to live for. He borrows $50,000 from a wealthy uncle with a promise: He either marries rich in the next 6 weeks and pays his uncle back with interest, or everything – his car, his wardrobe, all his possessions – goes to his uncle. He fritters away the time, but just a few short days before the deadline, he stumbles upon the perfect mark: Henrietta Lowell, a vastly wealthy socialite so clumsy and shy no one has bothered to try and woo her. Henry quickly insinuates himself into her life, but can he go through with his plan? Will her greedy lawyer get in his way? What about his uncle, who would much rather have all his property than a mere 10% interest? And will Henrietta fall for it all?

In many ways, this premise is very familiar to romantic comedy fans. Is this that much different than dating someone on a bet, pretending you don’t own a competing shop, or any of the other, myriad lies that romantic comedies often build off of? Well, yes. Because I left out one important detail: Henry plans to murder his bride-to-be shortly after the wedding so that he can return to his life of idle, responsibility-free luxury. His secret is considerably darker, though the movie never really treats it as such.

And that’s because, in this genre, deception is the norm, not the exception. His deception of Henrietta may be more extreme than most, but it fits a pattern of behavior. Indeed, May even films it as an almost cartoonish deception. Hilariously, in one scene, Henrietta dangles at the edge of a cliff trying to collect a species of plant she’s noticed, the perfect opportunity for murder, but Henry is distractedly ignoring her… so he can read a book titled Beginner’s Guide to Toxicology. It’s a scene straight out of Loony Toons, in some way, pushing the conceit so far into the ridiculous that it’s hard to register just how creepy the plot is. But isn’t that the case with a lot of romantic comedies?

As a note, A New Leaf seems to find Walter Matthau playing an asexual male lead, something I’ve never seen before in a mainstream romantic comedy. And I really don’t think I’m reading too much into this. Early in the film, when Matthau asks his friends to introduce him to wealthy, eligible women, they are befuddled, as he has never shown an interest in women before. They introduce him to one who seems completely gung-ho about seeing him, which could solve all his financial problems — except, she quickly makes a sexual pass at him, something he cannot abide, and he leaves her on the spot. It is only when he meets Elaine May’s Henrietta, a conservatively dressed klutz too shy to ever proposition him, that he finds someone he’s even willing to pretend to marry — and he only actually seems resigned to live with her as her husband when he realizes that her dream of domestic bliss is the two of them teaching together at the local college before grading papers together in the study, a fairly platonic vision of marriage. Matthau doesn’t seem to be playing gay, the way his uncle (James Coco) is; instead, he is disinterested to the point of repulsion in the idea of sex.

While it is nice to see some asexual representation in the genre, in A New Leaf, it feels like part of the critique. Most romcoms, rated PG or PG-13 to appeal to as many people as possible, are largely sexless, a few potentially risque jokes aside. The leads are attractive, certainly, but sex is what happens after the happy ending of marriage, and then only implicitly. This, of course, is not how many people approach the idea of romance, though some definitely do. Modern romcoms tend to be more frank about sexuality, but they’re still figuring out how to fit sex – classically posited as ‘the reward’ at the end of the story – into the traditional emotion structure of the genre, and I think they’re struggling.

May recognized a great many of the genre’s tropes and issues decades ago, and in A New Leaf, managed to create a film that satirizes the romantic comedy without abandoning the genre’s genuine charms. A darkly funny asexual romantic comedy is hardly what I expected to find, revisiting this 46-year old classic, but it’s an underappreciated gem of a film that finds a place in the genre’s storied history. While May’s original cut is rumored to be an hour longer and considerably darker – a film I would absolutely LOVE to one day see, if it still exists in any form – the movie we got is still a delight worth seeking out.

A New Leaf was written and directed by Elaine May, and stars Elaine May and Walter Matthau.

Originally released in 1971, A New Leaf is now available on DVD and blu-ray from Olive Films, and can be rented on Amazon.

]]>https://cinemaromantique.com/2017/12/11/elaine-may-new-leaf/feed/0A New Leaf Elaine May movie review 3cinemaromantiqueReview: ‘Mudbound’ (2017) Is An Intimate Epichttps://cinemaromantique.com/2017/12/04/review-mudbound-netflix/
https://cinemaromantique.com/2017/12/04/review-mudbound-netflix/#respondMon, 04 Dec 2017 19:10:03 +0000http://cinemaromantique.com/?p=787More]]>The Jackson family has worked the land they’re on for a long time now. They’re tenant farmers now, but their ancestors worked the exact same land as slaves. Hap, the family patriarch, wants to own the land he works, but he knows that a deed means nothing in the face of the power and fury of white Mississippians who would never, ever let a black man rise so far. All they can do is keep their heads down, work hard, and pray that eldest son Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) survives World War II.

The McAllan family are well-educated Tennesseans, with the freedom to move about the country, a freedom they make use of when Henry (Jason Clarke), the family patriarch, impulsively buys a Mississippi farm and moves his whole family down there to work it. He doesn’t have much experience, and he lacks the business sense to even make sure his family has a place to sleep when they arrive, but at least he has the Jacksons to make sure the land gets worked right. Now they have to find a way to thrive in rural life, and pray that younger brother Jamie survives World War II.

Mudbound is, at its heart, the story of these two families and the relationships that form – and shatter – between them. Adapted from a novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan, Mudbound is a wonderfully observed look at the complexities of human emotion. This plays out both in small, internal conflicts and larger societal strife, looking at the ways we relate to one another as families, as lovers, as employees, and as the Other. There are moments of grotesque bigotry and violence, but, as with many great tragedies, they never feel unearned; rather than a shock, they are the result of a series of totally understandable decisions, small moments that have a cumulative power that belies their initial intimacy.

In one early scene, where Florence Jackson (Mary J. Blige) watches her son Ronsel go to war, the script – and Blige, excellent in the role – gets at a contradiction of parenthood: She loves all her children equally, she doesn’t have a favorite… but Ronsel will be, for the next few years, first and foremost in her thoughts and prayers. She feels some guilt about this, but also knows herself well enough to understand that she will simply have to live with it. Florence is a woman hemmed in by circumstance and society, but her largely internal conflicts dominate the film’s most moral landscape.

On the other hand, Henry (Jason Clarke) in many ways is an exemplar of the film’s use of macro relationships to get across larger points about society. Henry certainly isn’t a good person, but he doesn’t seem to harbor the same passionate hatred for black people that his father (Jonathan Banks) does. He doesn’t seem to harbor much passion for anything, really; he just wants to make money off his farm and raise a family. But his ignorance doesn’t shield him from participating in monstrous injustice, as he’s more than happy to take advantage of ‘the way things are’ to force the Jackson’s to give up some of their wages to accept help they don’t want just so he can make a little extra money. Perhaps the most potent example of this comes from the sequences that bookend the film, which illustrate the degree to which Henry neither understands nor cares about the world around him. He is ‘All Lives Matter’ personified, uncomfortable with seeing himself as an outright bigot but ecstatic to use his power and privilege to bend everyone around him to his will, even as he vehemently denies doing so. As they say at the beginning of the film, he feels an absolute confidence that he will get his way, in spite of reality.

Part of what I find striking about Mudbound is how rarely it takes the easy way out. Characters are messy in a way I rarely see in film, which tend to favor smaller, self-contained stories. To take one example: Laura McAllan (Carey Mulligan), wife of Henry, has a fairly simple arc set up at the beginning of the film, one in which she realizes that she isn’t in love with her husband, but with his brother, and either decides to leave her husband or wallows with a man she doesn’t truly love. But, in entangling her story with that of the Jackson family, her narrative goes askew, the seemingly binary choice laid out at the beginning of the film exploding into a series of smaller moments that build a more complex character.

It is also worth noting: Mudbound is a gorgeous film. Mudbound‘s budget, given that it’s a period piece that includes scenes set during World War II, is a miniscule $10 million, and cinematographer Rachel Morrison makes the most of it. Its use of light, of farmers working with the rising and setting of the sun, is particularly striking. At times, it reminded me of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, but Mudbound – as befitting the name – is a less… pastoral film, the Morrison manages to capture the grit and grime of farm life well. Still, the things that keep coming back to me are her images of the farm, often beautiful, but also isolated and unchanging as the world moves forward.

To be frank, I think it’s a crime that Netflix released and buried Mudbound the way it did. This is an old-fashioned social epic, the kind of movie you always hear adults begging to see more of on the big screen. Dee Rees has crafted something that manages to be both emotionally devastating and surprisingly uplifting at times, an empathetic tragedy with clear eyes about America’s racial legacy and the slow social changes motivated in part by World War II. Her film is an expansive examination of the relationships we forge – romantic, platonic, familial, and fraternal – that bind us together, and the people who through bigotry, ignorance, or greed try to tear those relationships apart. This is one of Netflix’s best films, and one that I think anyone looking for a strong, emotionally complex film should seek out.

Mudbound is available now on Netflix. Written by Dee Rees and Virgil Williams adapting a novel by Hillary Jordan and directed by Dee Rees, Mudbound stars Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, and Garrett Hedlund.

]]>https://cinemaromantique.com/2017/12/04/review-mudbound-netflix/feed/0Rootscinemaromantique‘Silver Surfer’, Comics’ Greatest Romance in Decades, Concludeshttps://cinemaromantique.com/2017/10/31/silver-surfer-romance/
https://cinemaromantique.com/2017/10/31/silver-surfer-romance/#respondTue, 31 Oct 2017 18:29:56 +0000http://cinemaromantique.com/?p=583More]]>For the last four years, Silver Surfer has been among the finest comics being published every month, at Marvel or anywhere else. Dan Slott, Mike Allred, and Laura Allred have created a sci-fi adventure that’s warmer, sharper, and better-looking than anything else in the genre, but the thing that really caught my attention – and my heart – is that they’re also telling one of the finest romances in modern superhero comics. The basic premise of the Slott/Allred/Allred Silver Surfer stories is this: Norrin Radd, the Silver Surfer, finds himself saddled with an Earth girl named Dawn Greenwood on one adventure to save a world in deep space. There’s nothing particularly special about Dawn, a small-town girl who lived a pretty plain life most of the time, but when adventure calls, she answers. The two form a bond as they travel from planet to planet, and that bond deepens as they come to know each other, blossoming into a sweet-natured romantic relationship. The series has been called out in review after review as a clone of Doctor Who in the way it mashes up classic sci-fi adventure with out-of-this-world romantic tension, but I think those reviews miss something important: This is not a change to who the Silver Surfer is, but a return to the character’s romantic roots.

We first meet the Silver Surfer, in 1966, he was a villain, the Herald of Galactus. It was his job to scout planets so that his master, a cosmic deity who needed to consume whole planets to survive, could feed. Upon arriving on Earth, he clashed with the Fantastic Four, but he eventually came around to the side of angels and helped the Fantastic Four repel his master. He was trapped for years on Earth afterwords, becoming a regular guest star in various Marvel books. In short, he became a hero — but how could a man who helped murder planets be a hero? What compelled him to join Galactus?

As we eventually learned, it was love that pushed the Surfer into his cosmic monstrosity. Galactus came to his own planet, Zenn-La, intent on devouring it and killing its populace. Silver Surfer, then named Norrin Radd, was deep in love with a Zenn-La’s princess, Shalla-Bal. He went to Galactus to negotiate, promising to serve him… if he spared Shalla-Bal and his people. He was granted the Power Cosmic and set out on a lonely journey through the spaceways that found his name cursed the galaxy over. He was a monster, but he was a noble monster, tortured by what he did but firm in his love of his people and his princess.

Once he become a hero, much of that idea was lost. Critics focused on the Surfer’s isolation and outer-space adventure, but not the core idea that Norrin Radd was such a romantic that he was willing to do anything for love was lost. Dan Slott, alongside Mike and Laura Allred, brought the hopeless romanticism of the Surfer back in sight, but they did so in a fundamentally optimistic series that uses the science-fantasy adventure stories of Doctor Who. If classic Silver Surfer was a man willing to do monstrous things for love, then these new stories illustrate a man who is willing do the right thing for love, even when the right thing is incredibly difficult to do. It was a surprisingly effective way to combine the ideas of the surfer as a lonely wanderer, a hopeless romantic, and a man with a dark past.

I’m equally interested in the characterization of Dawn. Dawn is explicitly not the damsel in distress in many of these stories. While it is the Surfer’s ‘Power Cosmic’ that allows them to fly through space unharmed, the Surfer has an aloofness that would prevent him from getting involved in many adventures. It is Dawn, so excited by the mysteries of the universe, who pushes the Surfer into action – not unlike Nora in the Thin Man series – and it is often Dawn who forces him to pull back and make the right choice.

That said, Silver Surfer acknowledges the downside to Dawn’s adventurous spirit as well. The book periodically returns to Earth, and to Dawn’s much more complex family life. There, she has a sister, a father, an inn she was supposed to help run — she has a life. And as she gallivants across galaxies, she lets increasingly important moments of that life slip by, including one gut-punch moment late in the series that reverberates for issues to come. The series is dedicated to the spirit of adventure, but capable of acknowledging the complexities of the relationships that may be affected by that adventure. Norrin’s isolation was difficult for him, true, but it meant that he was never tied to one place for too long.

When the Slott/Allred/Allred Silver Surfer #1 debuted in 2014, it had, like so many comics these days, multiple covers with varying gimmicks. It is rare, in my experience, that the covers do so fine a job at getting across the ethos of, not just an issue, but an entire series.

In the first, you see chaos — warmth and cartoonish invention, an outerspace adventure that pairs daring rescues with weird aliens. Space is a large, messy, populous place, full of adventure and mystery, and even the void is not completely dark, but streaked with purple and full of planets teeming with life. This gets across the look and tone of the series well. In the other, you see the Surfer alone, in black and white, a stark and isolated figure pushing forward in a hostile universe. One cover acknowledges the Surfer’s past; the other pushes him to a new and more hopeful future. Or perhaps one is just a brief interlude in a life defined by the other. But which is which?

Silver Surfer has been running steadily since 2014, and it finally came to an end last week. The journey has been thrilling, emotional, and frequently romantic, and it will be hard to imagine a future without Dawn and Norrin waiting for me each week. Dan Slott, Mike Allred, and Laura Allred revitalized Marvel’s cosmic comics, bringing wit, warmth, and creativity to outer space. More importantly, they found a way to make longform, serialized romance thrilling and inventive in a way superhero comics have typically struggled to do, and they did so with one of the most entertaining and approachable books on the shelves.

Links to the complete series on Amazon can be found below. You can also read them on digital services, like Comixology, or on Marvel Unlimited.

And if you find yourself enjoying Silver Surfer, I also strongly recommend that you check out Ivar, Timewalker, a similarly romantic sci-fi adventure story by the same author, Dan Slott (edit: Ivar is actually by Fred Van Lente, not Dan Slott. Sorry for the confusion!). Ivar is twistier, dealing less in cosmic adventure and more in time travel shenanigans, but the heart of the book remains similar.

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]]>https://cinemaromantique.com/2017/10/31/silver-surfer-romance/feed/0Silver Surfer cover - Francesco Francavilla - slimcinemaromantiqueReview: ‘Professor Marston & the Wonder Women’ (2017) Is Absolutely Wonderfulhttps://cinemaromantique.com/2017/10/18/review-professor-marston-wonder-women/
https://cinemaromantique.com/2017/10/18/review-professor-marston-wonder-women/#commentsWed, 18 Oct 2017 17:59:03 +0000http://cinemaromantique.com/?p=771More]]>William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) is a professor at Radcliffe University, an all-women’s school associated with Harvard where he teaches psychology with his wife and research partner, Elizabeth Marston (Rebecca Hall), a brilliant researcher denied the Harvard degree she earned because of her gender. Into their lives comes Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote), a fresh faced student who signs up to assist them with their research. William quickly begins to lust after his new student, and while Elizabeth isn’t particularly jealous, she also isn’t interested at jeopardizing their place at the university for her husband’s sexual gratification — at least until she realizes that Olive is more interested in Elizabeth than William. Rather than devolving into a love triangle, however, the three quickly realize that they all have feelings for one another, and thus begin an unconventional life together, a life that eventually leads to the creation of comics’ greatest heroine: Wonder Woman.

At times, the standard-issue ‘prestige biopic’ format does hurt the movie’s pacing and melodrama. To me, biopics tend to falter when it comes to basic issues of story structure, so enamored with covering the subject’s entire life that it forgets to focus on the most interesting aspects of it; Professor Marston definitely hits on this issue a bit. There are essentially three timelines in the movie: The first half largely tracks the unconventional courtship of the triad, the back half tracks the difficulty of living in the 30s and 40s in a polyamorous relationship, and interspersed throughout is a framing device in which Marston is forced to defend the comic’s kinky content to an advisory board led by Josette Frank (Connie Britton). And here’s where the problems come in. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women tries, at various times, to be a social issue drama, a romance, a biopic, and a few other things, with varying degrees of success, and the mish-mash of all this together means that some parts of the movie inevitably drag.

But this is a blog dedicated to romance, and there’s a reason I’m writing about this film: When director Angela Robinson (D.E.B.S., a fantastic camp lesbian romantic comedy) focuses on the romantic and sexual relationship between William, Elizabeth, and Olive, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women positively sings, becoming one of my favorite films of the year. Luke Evans (Beauty and the Beast), Rebecca Hall (The Gift), and Bella Heathcote (The Neon Demon) have phenomenal chemistry, and Robinson knows how to highlight those sparks.

This is particularly true in the movie’s most innovative scenes, in which the three begin to explore BDSM and kink with one another. When their sex lives are highlighted, the movie becomes truly great. The lighting improves, the editing improves, the pacing improves; the film comes alive. There are small character moments and images from these scenes that will likely stick with me all year, moments of sublime sensuality and surprising sweetness. The film’s sex scenes are generous, erotic, and largely excellent on issues of consent. As with Desiree Akhavan’s excellent Appropriate Behavior, the sex here tells a story about the characters’ relationships with one another, its themes of dominance and submission coming out clearly in the framing and choreography of the sex.

With any biopic, there are inevitably questions about historical accuracy, and this one is no different. The film discusses at great length how private the Marstons were, how much they hid from neighbors and society, it should surprise no one that there is very little evidence as to how their three-way relationship works. This has led some scholars – including Jill Lepore, author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman – to claim that Elizabeth and Olive weren’t lovers. That said, as Noah Berlatsky points out in an excellent article at the Verge, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that Olive and Elizabeth were lovers, and Lepore’s work, while quite good, is far from definitive – or provable. Biopics, it must be remembered, are fictionalized accounts; they are not documentaries. The truth is, they are figures in the past, and it is very difficult to prove or disprove who said what, who kissed whom, and how anyone felt. Normally, we trust the director’s take… unless, apparently, that take involves homosexuality.

The truth is, healthy lesbian relationships are still a relative rarity in Hollywood film, and polyamory or realistic displays of kink remain functionally unheard of. Off the top of my head, I could only think of a single other film that celebrates the complexity of non-monagmous relationships, Ernst Lubitsch’s phenomenal 1933 film Design For Living, and very few that portray kink accurartely. Robinson’s film is more explicit and more queer, and it’s a lovely step forward for cinematic representation. But more than that, it’s a lively and entertaining period romance that manages to be both charming and insightful. While the movie has its flaws, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is an adventurous, queer delight. This one is absolutely worth your time.

There are few tropes in fiction – or in real life – as noxious as the ‘Nice Guy’. You know the kind: Quiet, ‘friendly’ but judgmental, pining away for a girl… who never gives him a moment’s notice while she pursues literally everyone else. He gets bitter. He knows he’s right for her. He knows she should fuck him. But for some reason, she just can’t see it. Why can’t she realize that he knows what’s best for her?

On the surface, writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig’s excellent 2016 coming-of-age film The Edge of Seventeen might seem to fall prey to that dynamic in its romantic subplot, like so many high school movies before it. The film’s romantic aspect gives its young lead, Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), two options: Bad boy Nick (Alexander Calvert), and dorky classmate Erwin (Hayden Szeto). On the surface, it appears to be a classic ‘Nice Guy’ scenario, as Nadine pines for Nick while quietly relying on Erwin’s emotional support. But while The Edge of Seventeen plays with many of the expected story beats in its romantic subplot, it puts an unexpected spin on what those beats mean and where they’re coming from.

Take the bad boy. Nick is introduced as Nadine stares across the quad at him and mutters, “God, juvie made him so hot.” Nadine isn’t particularly interested in him as a person; she wants to fuck him. Sort of. Nadine is a virgin, and she doesn’t quite know what she wants, but she knows he’s attractive and a little dangerous, and that’s enough for her fantasies. As she gets to know him, she realizes not just that she wants something different, but that he wants something different, that he wants the persona she put on to meet him rather than the person she actually is. Both of them were chasing fantasies.

And then there’s the nice guy. Erwin is introduced as a classmate; rather than someone she’s watching from afar, we meet him in conversation. He’s not an ideal, but a person Nadine knows and can judge. He’s awkward and funny and nervous but surprisingly self-confident; he’s a full person. And, unlike Nick, he’s forced to interact with Nadine as a complete person, dealing with her anger, cynicism, and depression early on in their relationship, side by side with her humor, intelligence, and energy.

It’s important to note here that Erwin is very clear about what he wants. While he’s happy to offer emotional support to Nadine, he never hides behind friendship. He asks her out the second time they talk. When she calls him to go to a carnival, he assumes it was a date and tries to kiss her. A key component of the Nice Guy is that he tries to use friendship as a building block to romance, a back door to get at a girl without risk, and that he uses that trust to subtly undermine her relationship with or interest in other, less suitable partners. Erwin doesn’t do that.

Erwin never knows about Nadine’s interest in Nick. He never finds out about the message she sends him, or about the date she goes on with him the night before the film festival. If this were Erwin’s story, the key dramatic moment of his story would be discovering this… and either forgiving her for it or moving beyond her, with his needs being foregrounded and hers being subsumed. Her realization would be that she was wrong to overlook him. A key moment late in the film suggests that Erwin might actually be seeing this as a nice guy narrative, and if he were the lead, we would likely be seeing that movie. Indeed, in a way, we do get to see a short version of that movie with Erwin’s short animated film.

But this is not Erwin’s story, and we aren’t seeing that movie. The Edge of Seventeen is Nadine’s story, and that makes a big difference. The dramatic turn here isn’t Erwin finding out about Nick and Nadine realizing she loved him, but about Nadine realizing what her self-destructive impulses do to the people around her. By being confronted with her mistaken assumptions about Nick, her teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson), and her brother Darian (Blake Jenner) in rapid succession, Nadine is forced to confront the gap between the people in her life and her vision of the people in her life. By changing the point of view, Craig changes the center of gravity of the Nice Guy Narrative in an essential way. It changes what the movie is about.

The Edge of Seventeen is, overall, one of the sharpest movies out there about teenage relationships and mental health, and not just in its look at teenage romance. The movie has a sophisticated understanding of the way people use the conflicting demands within any relationship to hurt one another, of how easy it is to use our expectations of each other to lash out. The basic components of the film – nice guy love triangle, best friend dating her perfect brother, unable to relate to her flighty mother – all seem cliche at first blush, but through the immaculately developed Nadine, Craig finds a core soulfulness that moves beyond our expectations of these tropes.

The Edge of Seventeen is still out in some theaters, and is available to buy On Demand right now. It will be available to rent or to own a physical copy of starting February 14th. Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, The Edge of Seventeen stars Hailee Steinfeld, Blake Jenner, and Woody Harrelson.

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]]>https://cinemaromantique.com/2017/02/01/nice-guys-edge-of-seventeen/feed/0kelly-fremons-the-edge-of-seventeen-great-coatcinemaromantiquekelly-fremons-the-edge-of-seventeen-nadine-and-erwinTHE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN‘Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them’ (2016) Loses Track of Its Protagonistshttps://cinemaromantique.com/2016/11/18/fantastic-beasts-where-to-find-them-2016-loses-track-of-its-protagonists/
https://cinemaromantique.com/2016/11/18/fantastic-beasts-where-to-find-them-2016-loses-track-of-its-protagonists/#respondFri, 18 Nov 2016 19:27:45 +0000http://cinemaromantique.com/?p=698More]]>I don’t normally review every new movie that comes out. I see most of them, or as many as I can, but the purview of this website is fairly specific, and most big movies – which have functional but utterly uninspired romantic subplots – simply aren’t worth bringing up. What I love is to be able to write about the truly great films I see each year, the ones that get love and romance really right: The Lobster, Love & Friendship, Hamilton, Southside With You, The Handmaiden, man this year was amazing. But every so often, I find a major studio film that botches its romantic aspects so thoroughly that I try to mention it when I can: Warcraft, Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange. Unfortunately, Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them is on the latter list.

Now, it’s important to note: I don’t think Fantastic Beasts is a very good movie in the first place, but the romantic subplot – and the junk surrounding it – basically explain why I feel that way. Because it’s almost completely detached from the actual story of the film. There are three plots here that are jammed fairly haphazardly together. One of these stories is great – Katherine Waterston as a magical detective in a noir-tinged 1920s fantasy is brilliant; great casting, solid conflicts, cool thematic material, and strong exploration of the world. I have no complaints whatsoever about this section of the film. This was even better than I could have hoped. One of the three stories is neither great nor particularly bad, just a bunch of franchise-building mumbo-jumbo about Gellert Grindelwald that never sticks around long enough to make much of an impression.

But the third story is where Fantastic Beasts goes off the rails. It has nothing to do with the other two and no thematic resonance whatsoever, and yet it takes up the vast majority of the film’s runtime. In this one, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) brings a suitcase full of monsters to the United States, but a mix-up with no-maj schlub Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) ends up releasing a number of the beasts into the wilds of New York City. You could literally remove this story from the film wholesale without actually affecting the plot of the film, except for one final major emotional beat. And that beat is one of the low points of the film.

If you are opposed to minor spoilers about the climax of the film, skip to the next picture. In a way, that relationship between Kowalski and Queenie (Alison Sudol) forms the basis of the the emotional climax of Kowalski’s arc here. Forced to forget his adventure so that the NYC wizards could maintain their secrecy – though… not really forced; I still don’t really ‘get’ why they went through with it given that MACUSA specifically left them alone and unsupervised – Kowalski is giving up his chance at a real relationship with gorgeous flapper Queenie, and he’s doing so willingly. When he steps outside, he’ll forget that he ever knew her, and whatever burgeoning relationship was there will be gone forever.

Except… what relationship?! The two of them have, what, two conversations in the entire movie? And at least one of those conversations is her reading his mind and reacting to what she sees — while we, the audience, never have any idea of what that is. Literally the entire basis of their relationship is purposely left out of the movie.

So, how do I form an emotional connection to a relationship I never see developing between two characters who barely interact and don’t really affect the story? This is, again, one of the film’s biggest emotional turning points, but it comes seemingly out of nowhere, much like the very similar moment in this summer’s Warcraft. A more tightly focused film might have found time to remember the two of them in all the plot machinations, but Fantastic Beasts, again, jams three stories together without the strong core structure that kept the Harry Potter books and films on track regardless of the sprawl of each book’s yearlong, multi-hero plots.

This is not to slight Fogler or Sudol, both of whom actually give really strong performances. Rather, this is to say that it is very, very hard to build something in two or three scenes that can hold the weight of a film’s emotional climax. You need simplistic iconism – the closer they get to an ur-romantic plot, the quicker we ‘get it’ – and actors who don’t just have chemistry, but who have baggage. If you aren’t going to take the time to establish a relationship, you need to hire actors whose mere casting side-by-side suggests such a thing: Pitt & Jolie 10 years ago, Hanks & Ryan 20 years ago, Bogart and Bacall decades back. Most decades have one or two couples like this, and that’s the only way a moment like this works: Familiarity.

In a way, the film’s biggest problem is that it suffers from what I call ‘Mistaken Protagonist Syndrome.’ This is when the story has one protagonist, but the plot has a different one. Pacific Rim is a good example of this. Mako Mori is the only character in the film with a really strong arc. The story, from the thematic content to the emotional arcs, belongs to her. It is Mako Mori who pushes the program forward, Mako Mori who is chosen out of nowhere to pilot it, Mako Mori who has to overcome her tragic past to learn to pilot the mech, and Mako Mori who must watch her father figure sacrifice himself for her. But the plot, the list of events that happen, is about Raleigh Beckett, a washed up old pilot brought in, ultimately, to train Mako. He is Mako’s Obi-Wan, so why does the movie follow him?

Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them make a similar mistake, just… uh, twice. Because while there at three major running plots – more like five or six, honestly, but only three the heroes really intersect with – there are really just two competing stories. The most major is Katherine Waterston’s, as a mousy former magical detective who got in too deep on a case and got demoted, but is certain she was right and aching to dive back into the investigation. The second is Dan Fogler’s, as a schlubby everyman who learns about a world of magic and finds the potential for all his dreams to come true within it — if he survives. Either of these stories might be compelling on their own, but both are subsumed by the film’s plot, which finds whimsical mystic zoologist Newt Scamander trying to hunt down his missing animals. Films with Mistaken Protagonist Syndrome suffer not because they’re not entertaining but because the thematic and emotional content is drowned out by the sheer force of meaningless things relentlessly happening. In Pacific Rim, I found the meaningless things relentlessly happening (aka the plot) to be wildly entertaining even if it wasn’t satisfying on any deeper level; in Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them, I did not. Mileage may vary.

I don’t mean to imply, by the way, that the movie is an unmitigated trainwreck. It’s gorgeous to look at. The costumes are fantastic. The score is solid. Rowling’s script has moments of genuine wit and insight. The performances are almost all excellent, with Samantha Morton’s Mary Lou Barebone and Colin Farrell’s Graves standing out as imposing, fascinating figures despite not having much to actually do. Carmen Ejogo likewise stands out, though the film gives her even less to do; on the page, she’s a mass of meaningless contradictions, and it’s only Ejogo who makes the character even semi-coherent. I don’t want to minimize the contributions of Sudol and Fogler, again, who try like hell to sell this thing.

Ultimately, a lot of storytelling comes down to a single question: Can you make us feel that something is true that we know isn’t? Special effects have come a long way to making a magical world that can feel real to the characters, but they can’t do anything for the characters’ relationships. Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them had some truly great core ideas, up to and including the failed emotional climax of Kowalski’s arc. But they were suffocated by plottiness, and there’s something genuinely sad about the Harry Potter series finally surrendering to the whiz-bang plot machinations that define and destroy so many blockbuster films.

Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them is out now in theaters around the world. Written by J.K. Rowling (!) and directed by David Yates, Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them stars Katherine Waterston, Eddie Redmayne,

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]]>https://cinemaromantique.com/2016/11/18/fantastic-beasts-where-to-find-them-2016-loses-track-of-its-protagonists/feed/0david-yates-fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-flapperscinemaromantiquedavid-yates-fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-meeting-queeniedavid-yates-fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-newt-and-kowalskiMatrimonial Bliss: ‘The Thin Man’s Nick & Nora Charleshttps://cinemaromantique.com/2016/09/16/matrimonial-bliss-the-thin-mans-nick-nora-charles/
https://cinemaromantique.com/2016/09/16/matrimonial-bliss-the-thin-mans-nick-nora-charles/#commentsFri, 16 Sep 2016 17:04:00 +0000http://cinemaromantique.com/?p=640More]]>If there is one idea I’ve heard time and time again from editors and writers, it is this: A stable marriage is dull. It’s not that marriage is bad, to them, it’s just that it’s not very dramatically interesting. The core of classical drama, after all, is conflict and change, two things that don’t typically lead to much stability in a love life. On its surface, this argument makes sense, but a lot of commonly held beliefs like that make sense on the surface, only to prove a bit less honest when you dig beneath the surface. So, welcome to Matrimonial Bliss, a new series of articles highlighting some of the great married couples of film, television, and literature.

I want to open with one of my all-time favorite film couples: Nick and Nora Charles, the husband-and-wife detective duo from 1930’s mystery series The Thin Man. Nick is a charming alcoholic who retired from detective work when he married adventurous wealthy society gal Nora. When we meet them, they’ve been married for some time, developed a rapid-fire patter between them that mostly just confuses anyone outside the bubble and a seemingly unbreakable trust. They drink relentlessly, party constantly, and occasionally- very occasionally – solve a mystery or two between martinis.

Take a look at this scene, Nora’s introduction in the film and one of the most iconic drinking scenes I can remember.

Most of the time, fictional wives are what Andrew Matthews called ‘plotblockers‘. Think Anna Gunn’s Skyler White, of Breaking Bad fame, or any superheroic spouse/friend/relative kept in the dark ‘to keep them safe’. It’s not particularly dramatic to watch a character say “Don’t do this,” and then to have the character do it anyway. Sure, it takes up pages and fills up runtime, but that’s really the kindest that can be said about it in most instances. In reality, what it does is turn the fictional spouse into a minor antagonist, a road block the hero must overcome as part of his growth. If your hero’s wife is one of the main villains of your thriller, she’d better be Gone Girl level fascinating to watch if you want to make me care about that conflict.

Or, better yet, make them both the heroes. Don’t throw the wife under the bus to jumpstart the tension early. In The Thin Man, Nora is immediately introduced as Nick’s equal, going drink-for-drink and, later in the film, pushing him to get involved with the story in a way he isn’t particularly interested in. Typically, wives in fiction are treated as a gatekeeper, struggling mightily to prevent their men – and their audience – from having fun out of a maternal concern for safety. Nora inverts that, becoming the impetus that keeps pushing her husband – and their audience – towards the fun. Indeed, while Nick is the detective, without Nora, there is no The Thin Man. Nick never gets involved in the story. Rather than treating Nora as a maternal presence meant to keep Nick safe, she’s an adventurer trying to prod her retired husband to get back in to the swing of things, to spice up the dullness of married society life with a murder mystery every now and again.

This is something you’ll see over and over again as this column continues: If you want your married couple – or dating couple, or family, or whatever – to be interesting, you can’t give the man all the ‘story positive’ traits. What I mean by that is, you can’t give the male character all the traits that push the story forward and the female character all the traits that hold it back. Here, Nick has the skills to solve the mystery, so Nora is given the drive to solve the mystery. If Nick had both, you’d have one interesting character and one extraneous one. As it is, there’s still conflict – Nora wants to dive into the adventure; Nick wants to relax and throw a party – and change – Nora convinces Nick to give a damn; Nick jumps into showboating mode to impress Nora – but instead of Nick driving both, that narrative work is split evenly between the pair of them.

That helps you make a good, functional couple of characters. It’s the wit and vibrancy of Dashiell Hammett’s book, of husband-wife screenwriting duo Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, and of on-screen couple William Powell and Myrna Loy that place Nick and Nora among the truly great partners in film history. You can write a perfectly fun, functional couple, but chemistry is a thing, even with fictional characters, and that’s a little harder to invent. It’s little things, like the banter the pair of them share or Nick’s confidence in admitting to Nora that he has no idea what’s going on, that ground them as something more relatable. If the key to building a great romantic relationship in a story is putting two characters together and letting the audience fall in love with them as they do, then the key to crafting a great stable relationship is putting two characters together who you just have to keep spending time with.

Nick and Nora throw the best parties, give each other the best gifts, and solve the best mysteries. They drink like fish and approach the world with a devil-may-care wit. Who could resist?

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The Thin Man is the first film in a six-film series, made in 1934. The Thin Man was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich adapting hardboiled legend Dashiell Hammett, directed by W.S. Van Dyke, and stars William Powell and Myrna Loy. It is available on DVD, and for rent on streaming services like YouTube.

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]]>https://cinemaromantique.com/2016/09/16/matrimonial-bliss-the-thin-mans-nick-nora-charles/feed/1ws-van-dykes-the-thin-man-nick-nora-drinkingcinemaromantique‘Southside With You’ (2016) Redefines Modern American Iconshttps://cinemaromantique.com/2016/08/29/southside-with-you-review/
https://cinemaromantique.com/2016/08/29/southside-with-you-review/#commentsMon, 29 Aug 2016 13:58:39 +0000http://cinemaromantique.com/?p=642More]]>There is no feeling on Earth quite like a really great first date. There’s so much hope and expectation and uncertainty wrapped up in a few short hours with someone you like, a concrete sense that the outcome of this date completely alter the course of your life. It makes sense, then, that one of my all-time favorite romance movies is Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, that ultimate first date movie that tells the story of a French woman and an American man who meet by chance and decide to spend a night exploring Vienna together before their respective schedules drag them apart. The highest compliment I can give first-time writer/director Richard Tanne, then, is that he does a good job capturing the energy of Before Sunrise, the unfiltered emotional drama of those electric first hours together with someone special. And while Southside With You has some vital flaws, it is still almost certainly the best romance I’ve seen in theaters since Andrew Haigh’s Weekend.

It’s the summer of 1989, and Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter) is a second year associate at a large Chicago law firm. While she needs this job to help pay off her students loans, she’s been yearning for a chance to really help people. When a young summer associate, Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers), invites her to a community meeting, she decides to go, thinking it would just be a friendly day between colleagues. Barack has other ideas, and as the day carries on, a visit to the museum, drinks, a movie get added to what is clearly becoming a life-changing first-date for the both of them.

There’s really only one note that sours the movie for me: Barack is not a man who takes no for an answer. Tanne almost certainly meant to use this to highlight Barack’s charm, as he talks his way up from essentially tricking her into a first date using her interest in community activism to what became an intimate evening with them both. I actually wouldn’t necessarily mind that, if the movie didn’t highlight how frequently Michelle had to point out that Barack wasn’t respecting her boundaries, wasn’t respecting her wishes, wasn’t respecting her. It is meant to highlight how charming Barack is, something Parker Sawyers plays very well, but the movie conflates his unwillingness to hear “No” from condo developers with his unwillingness to hear “No” from romantic partners in a way that I found deeply disturbing. The movie rarely lingers on it, but every time it does, the romantic aspects begin to fray.

That said, for audiences who can forgive this sizable defect, largely two scenes that get just a bit too sour for me… Southside With You is an otherwise stellar romantic drama. Part of what makes a great romance work, what modern writers have forgotten in the push towards formula, is making the audience fall in love with a couple before the characters themselves do. Southside With You excels, here, taking one of the most flat-out likable celebrity couples in modern America and just letting them exist with one another. While it occasionally falls flat when the film falls into typical biopic problems and over-relies on crass references to their future or an obsession with personal history, Tanne makes those mistakes only very rarely. For the most part, the movie is about the intellectual push and pull between our two bright, quick leads, as their brains catch up to the undeniable physical chemistry the pair of them share.

Which means, of course, finding the perfect pair to play Barack and Michelle is essential. I think Southside With You succeeded here. Tika Sumpter manages to capture the precision and intelligence of Michelle well, but we’re seeing here a younger, more conflicted woman. She is highly competent, but torn between two worlds – she doesn’t necessarily like being a cog in a corporate law firm, but she’s dedicated to doing it better than anyone else, in part to offset the internal conflict that arrives from being a black woman in a firm full of white men. And Parker Sawyers is a real find as well. Barack Obama is probably the flat-out coolest President we’ve had in a looooong time, and Sawyers captures the youthful swagger that came with being a brilliant, charismatic speaker. Thankfully, Southside With You is no hagiography, though; both Barack and Michelle are flawed characters, one cocky and flighty and angrily holding on to a past he can’t quite grasp, the other uncertain and tightly wound, knowing she deserves greatness but feeling like she’ll never be allowed to earn it. They’re fascinating performances, and the two of them ground everything we see.

Southside With You is a sweetly alluring film, the sort of character-study-as-romance we so rarely see. Richard Tanne has assembled a winning cast, but the film rarely pushes any extraneous drama on to them. Instead, Southside With You mines its drama from the push and pull of two people getting to know one another. They talk about art, poetry, politics, and their own histories, walking and talking and giving us a deep sense of the intimacy they manage to build over a single day. From the moment Michelle Robinson catches a glimpse of Barack Obama the side view mirror of his car, a gorgeously shot moment that captures the charm and youthful vitality of a character we’ve only just met, it’s obvious that’s she’s started falling. But if you are anything like me, by the time that brief, early shot ends, you’ve already fallen under Southside With You‘s spell.

Southside With You is out now in limited release across the country. Written and directed by Richard Tanne, Southside With You stars Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers.

]]>https://cinemaromantique.com/2016/08/29/southside-with-you-review/feed/1Richard Tanne's Southside With You -- Barack and Michelle at the MuseumcinemaromantiqueRichard Tanne's Southside With You -- Barack and Michelle WalkingRichard Tanne's Southside With You -- Poster‘La La Land’ (2016) Trailerhttps://cinemaromantique.com/2016/07/13/la-la-land-trailer/
https://cinemaromantique.com/2016/07/13/la-la-land-trailer/#respondWed, 13 Jul 2016 14:34:46 +0000http://cinemaromantique.com/?p=635More]]>I know I’ve been a bit absent lately – I’m moving, I don’t have internet at home, and I don’t typically like to write while I’m supposed to be working. But those are excuses and excuses are for the weak and we here at Cinema Romantique are strong. And when I saw this trailer, I knew I had to share with you lovely people the moment my break hit.

La La Land follows an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) and a jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) who fall in love while they’re both up-and-comers, but find their relationship hitting the rocks with the rise and fall of their respective careers. This trailer, though, is more interested in the mood of the piece, a romantic musical that highlights the emotions of the characters with bright colors and deep shadows.

Writer/director Damien Chazelle is an exciting new talent. His Whiplash was a huge Sundance success story, an unbelievably tense look at a fractious relationship between a drummer and his teacher, and his rewrites helped turn 10 Cloverfield Lane into one of the year’s most surprisingly enjoyable films. Paired with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, two of our most talented young performers who display almost visceral chemistry in this trailer, Chazelle looks like he’ll be able to take that talent for interpersonal tension and apply it well to romantic drama.

As we get closer to the film’s release date, I suspect we’ll get a more traditional trailer, but as a teaser for what is shaping up to be among the year’s most exciting releases, this was definitely intriguing. You can watch the La La Land trailer below, and let me know what you think in the comments!

La La Land will be released on December 2nd, 2016 in theaters everywhere. It was written and directed by Damien Chazelle, and stars Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, and J.K. Simmons.